The lack of sacks and turnovers from the D is another factor. Sacks and TO's kill drives. if the D only gives up 2 first downs and a punt, it's a success in one regard, but it can completely flip field position. How many times does our D get a team inside the 20, the 10, only to let them out of the hole to punt from near midfield?

thanks for the feedback everyone, I don't think I could go through other team's drive summary's . I thought it would be more fun to do the Steelers, but even that got tiresome. Another thing that hurt as far as field position was penalties that helped to extend other teams drives.

I'd have to look back, but how many times did we get close to FG range only to be pushed back out of it? With as many close games as we played it would have been nice to put points on the board when we got close.

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you'll always have an unfavorable opinion of New York if you only focus on the pimps and the C.H.U.D.s

Very good points made by everyone. Yes, I would like to know how many times we had a first down on the other teams 35 yard line and didn't score because of a sack or holding call took us out of FG range. It seemed like it happened all the time.
Also a good point was made about the defense, it seems that a lot of times the other team was backed up inside their 20 and although they didn't score, they drove the ball out to midfield and then pinned us back deep with the punt. We always seemed to be on the losing end of the field position being swapped.
Of course special team penalties killed us all year. When Brown broke loose for a couple of big returns this year, I just sat in my seat quietly because I knew it was coming back for a penalty. Plus Brown added to the problem by fumbling, not fielding the punt and letting it roll 30 yards etc.

I went through drive summary's of this season and tallied the yard line they started and the results from each drive by us and our opponents for each game. These numbers aren't official and I most likely made a mistake or two.

Out of 181 offensive drives:

29.8% (54) started between our 0-19 yard line. we scored on 9 of those drives.
16.6% (30) started between our 30-49 yard line. we scored on 15 of those drives.
11.6% (21) started on our opponents side. we scored on 10 of those drives.

Out of 172 drives we defended against:

23.3% (40) started between their 0-19 yard line. they scored on 4 of those drives.
25.6% (44) started between their 30-49 yard line. they scored on 14 of those drives.
14.5% (25) started on our side. they scored on 18 of those drives.

Just thought it was interesting.

Here is what I get out of this. 23.3 % of the time we pinned the opponent inside the 20.

That means they were able to flip field position on us as 29.8% started inside our 20.

that means our offense had long field too many time and if our #1 ranked defense could have gotten a few 3 and outs our offense would have started in better shape to score.

that is why being a #1 ranked defense based on yards allowed is such a bogus, deceiving ranking.

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Win If You Can...Lose If You Must...But Always Cheat! Ken Patera